"A movie that will overpower you...like the smell of fresh urine does."

OK, we all know how historically bad this movie is reputed to be. And since this stinky little nugget has hit the home-video market, I've noticed a strange contigent of people speaking up; those who feel that this movie is somehow underrated, that the critics were gunning for Travolta and that the uptight & nasty old film critics always bash sci-fi movies anyway. To these people, I say SHUT UP! If you somehow happened to enjoy (or -god forbid - recommend) this unendurable stinkhole of a movie, your best bet is to just to keep it to yourself.

While I may agree that the horror/sci-fi genre has been dealt a raw deal by many critics, that's mainly because that's where a lot of the cheapest (and lamest) movies come from. (How many different versions of Alien must we sit through before we get angry?) Personally, I love science fiction, but that wouldn't force me to rate a sci-fi film higher than it deserves solely because of its genre.

Case in point - Battlefield Earth

I rented the DVD with an open mind and well aware of the critical lambasting it earned. Throughout the film, I was consistently aware of the shortcomings that other critics complained about, and I was particularly annoyed by the atrocious performances by the three leading men. While I've certainly seen WORSE films (The Haunting, Showgirls, Sphere, Ringmaster), I can safely say that Battlefield Earth earns a place right beside those films.

Maybe an example just had to be made, and Battlefield Earth just happened to be the wrong turkey at the wrong time.

As an educated film fanatic who would violently contend that Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Dark City, Blade Runner, Close Encounters, Planet of the Apes, The Time Machine, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Metropolis, Aliens and Alien are true cinematic classics that transcend their genre, I gotta also say this:

Battlefield Earth is easily one of the most amateurish, ponderously directed, poorly paced, atrociously written and all-around annoying Star-Driven Ego Project movies ever made, notable only for its particularly terrible acting performances and its overall reek of awfulness. My original sense of begrudging charity sank to mild annoyance before settling down to awestruck disgust, and that's the stink I sat in for the next 100 minutes.

Based on the waaaaay too lengthy novel by now-dead Scientology Creator (and gigantic scam artist) L. Ron Hubbard, the movie version tells the story of Earth, one thousand years in the future. An evil horde of aliens (known ridiculously as Psyclos) is using our planet as a mining operation, while the few remaining humans live up in the mountains, hiding from the legendary 'monsters'. When one smelly human grows weary of this existence, he sets out for...well, it's never made really clear what he sets out for, but he leaves home all dramatic-like.

Travolta plays the Snidley Whiplash-esque Terl, head of Psyclo Security. (Hell, Travolta's old enough now to register himself for Psyclo Security!) Terl captures Johnny and a handful of other smelly humans and what follows is basically the Special Olympics of Bad Filmmaking.

This festering trash heap has a strong foundation with a screenplay that simply defies intellect at every turn. In the interest of retaining my sanity, I'll spare you the myriad plot twists that will have you slapping your forehead for two hours, and just leave you with this thought: I've honestly seen episodes of Gilligan's Island that were more intelligently written than this movie.

John Travolta gives such a uniquely and consistently atrocious performance, you'll start to wonder if maybe he has some mild brain damage. I'm not trying to be merely hurtful here, but as the film goes on it's readily apparent that the man is just clueless. In several scenes, his 'evil alien' character comes dangerously close to sounding (and behaving) exactly like Dr. Evil!

No better is Barry Pepper as the feral Johnny. If this guy is meant to represent the one true hope for mankind, I'd gladly vote for slowly trudging back into the primordial ooze. To say that Pepper has no screen presence is like saying that ice gives off no heat. In other words, he's a gaping vacuum in the center of this movie.

If you're curious to see it just to see how awful Battlefied Earth is (as I was), just save yourself the 4 bucks. Yes, this movie is that bad, and discovering this news for yourself is simply a futile waste of life hours that would be better spent even if you were just sitting in a cold, dark room alone, staring at your fingers.